C h a z z W r i t e s . c o m

1. Check out this great post on ebook box sets by DD Scott at The Writer’s Guide to E-Publishing to make more money and sell more books.

2. I’m always researching how to best proceed in the book business. I run across great stuff all the time. When I want to keep a link for future reference, I dutifully click "Add to reading list." The article is added to the nigh-infinite cyber pile of stuff I’ll never look at again. RSS feeds pile up and notes get filed under: "Stuff to definitely get to once I become immortal."Scoopit! is my solution.

3. I add value to this blog by using Scoopit! links to point readers to useful stuff they might have missed. My blog is the surest way I have to avoid losing useful information to the "Add to reading list" button.

Enjoy DD Scott’s suggestions at the link below.

Great suggestions (with even more helpful links) from Joan Stewart on The Book Designer’s website. For instance, Locus.com wasn’t really on my radar.

I do wonder about the real value of blogging sometimes. Blogging success (as in eventually gathering a base, driving traffic and selling books and/or monetizing in an author’s case) depends on how you do it, your target audience and your goals. I justify this blog for writers by gathering publishing allies, building community and turning years of blogging about writing into two books, for instance.

If blogging takes time away from writing books you should be writing, blogging hurts you. An author page *is* necessary and you do need to at least blog that much so you have web real estate you own. Your blog is where you build your mailing list and you can’t do that on Amazon. (Subscribe to my mailing list at www.AllThatChazz.com, BTW.)

I’m not saying don’t blog (I have five blogs.) However, blogging must be pursued strategically, using time management and prioritzation. How do I do it? I don’t blog on all my blogs daily and the books come first. I’m getting better at writing shorter blog posts that are easily done and quicker  for readers to digest: Less Tolstoy, more Seth Godin.

Learn more about publicity from Joan Stewart at the link to The Book Designer below.

Author India Drummond noticed that Amazon has new categories, subcategories, theme categories and character categories. Learn at the link to The Writer’s Guide to E-publishing. They’re pretty detailed, cool and interesting (though they’ve got elves, dragons and pirates, but no zombies, darnnit!)

Um, hello, Amazon? I’ve got a bunch of books on your site. I’m grateful to India for pointing this out, of course, but shouldn’t Amazon go out of their way to let us know about something like this? Did I miss a meeting or a memo? Lots of things happen on Amazon and sometimes it seems like they rely on osmosis to announce changes. (Like one day you wake up and the tags are gone.)

It’s a good idea to revisit your book’s categories from time to time. If your work isn’t moving in Mystery, you might have more luck in Action/Adventure (assuming your book could reasonably fit both categories.)

You’re allowed two categories on Amazon, so explore your options so readers can find you. The more specific your list, the greater your chances of book buyers discovering you’re awesome (assuming you’re awesome.) You could be ranked 1,786,023 in sci-fi, but you could potentially be huge  in a subcategory, like First Contact, Galactic Empire or Cyberpunk.

It’s an exciting marketing opportunity if we work it right.

~ Chazz

Here’s an interesting survey of authors’ experiences with free promotions. Have a look at The ebook Author’s Corner at the link.

Most of us still try free promotions on Amazon. They are still the big dog by far. However, after 90 days with KDP Select, we move on to propagate on other platforms. Since free often isn’t effective, ninety days of exclusivity often feels too long for those five days of giveaways. We have to be clever about leveraging those promotions.

It would be encouraging if we heard about wild success on a platform other than Amazon at least once in a while. However, no one listens to Chazz so the distant second, third and fourth runners in the sales platform race still aren’t stealing the best ideas from each other to optimize their effectiveness. Ergo, anonymous reviews suck; anon reviews with stars but no explanatory comments suck harder; being unable to find a book you know is there is freakin’ ridic! (I’ve never used the phrase "freakin’ ridic" before. Once in a lifetime is sufficient.)

My horror serial, This Plague of Days, releases soon. I will be going with Amazon first, but I suspect for only one 90-day period and I don’t even plan to use all five days of free promotion. I’ll let you know how my clever leverage tactics work out. Gee, I hope they’re clever enough. 

To battle. Squire! My armor! 

~ Chazz

I write crime novels in which the cops never show up. However, my first love in the mystery genre was Agatha Christie. I also like Ian Rankin’s books very much. You’ll enjoy Rankin’s article on building your whodunit.

Learn at the link below and enjoy!

~ Chazz 

I especially like the idea of identifying top reviewers of your genre and offering them a free copy to review. Lots of ideas about tweaking the basics on this advice blog from How to Successfully Self-Publish. Learn at the link below.

~ Chazz

Click the Scoopit! link below to scoot over to JW Manus’s blog for an excellent take on the nature of advice, advice-givers and how we might look at the cost/benefit analysis of self-publishing. Love this! Subscribe over there, too. It’s a solid blog with lots of advice about ebook formatting, too.

(When you’re done that, check out author Jordanna East’s guest post on my blog, www.ThisPlagueOfDays.com. Recent tragic and insane weather events underline our needs for disaster preparedness and Jordanna asks what’s in your BOB? Check it out. It’s important.)

Cheers!

~ Chazz

The Quill & Quire reports (at the link) that TWUC will vote in June whether they should allow self-published authors into the treehouse. I’ve attended one of these meetings and, based on what I saw, I doubt the old guard will go for it. Many traditionally published authors take great pride in being plucked from the slush pile or being among the chosen. Getting picked is an accomplishment and a testament to their patience. (I won’t say hard work because every self-published author I know works just as hard or harder. We’re all working hard and wearing all the hats is an accomplishment, too, so no whining.)

In the meeting I attended a few years ago, there was great resistance to…how shall I put this nicely? The future. (Arguments that an ebook isn’t a "real" book make me sleepy.) However, that was a few years ago and more traditionally published authors are going hybrid or opting for self-publishing exclusively. Maybe the membership of The Writers’ Union of Canada will vote to include the self-published. It would be in their interest to do so.

One thing the leadership recognized when I spoke to a leader or two was this: Some may not want to bend to history’s turns, but it’s math that makes the better choice. Accept self-published authors into your union and you have a much bigger union with more money and therefore more clout, more services and worth. 

If hubris and appeals to emotion and tradition carry the day, self-published authors won’t be welcomed into the union in June. If it’s a smart business decision, we’ll be welcomed in the club and TWUC will be more relevant to what’s happening in the industry. (Hint: But that’s not the way to bet.)

If TWUC doesn’t let self-published authors in, one of these days some firebrand will get the notion into his or her head that they could organize a union of writers who only accept the self-published. That would be a much bigger and more powerful union that could offer some peachy benefits (e.g.  insurance breaks, perks, discounts and exposure and making TWUC irrelevant.) Hm. That’s a whole quesadilla of thought to chew on, isn’t it? 

(Thanks to my friend Kim for the tip! Next time you’re here, the first round is on me. Bring the family for trampolining and barbeque.~ Chazz)